"There is only one power that determines the course of history . . . the power of ideas." — Ayn Rand

Monday, July 11, 2016

The Democrat Party Platform Committee’s Call to ‘Investigate’ Climate Dissenters is Undisguised Fascism

It’s now official: The Democrat Party is no longer a fascist-leaning party. It is an American fascist movement.

As Michael Bastasch reports in Dem Party Platform Calls For Prosecuting Global Warming Skeptics for The Daily Caller, a panel of Democrats voted unanimously to include a plank in the 2016 Democrat Party platform “calling on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged corporate fraud on the part of fossil fuel companies who have reportedly misled shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change.” Thus, dissent is called fraud for the purpose of using the government’s guns to intimidate, financially ruin, and ultimately jail people who disagree with what is now considered the official state dogma—catastrophic climate change and the “clean energy policies” allegedly needed to combat it. The purpose is to silence dissent and stop informed public debate in America.

The inquisition launched by a cabal of Democrat Attorneys General calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power” is now official doctrine of a major political party of the United States of America, the country Founded in large part on intellectual freedom. The Democrats’ front line of attack targets the industry that provides the bulk of America’s energy of life—the fossil fuel industry. But like all fascists, the Democrats real target is control over every citizen’s life. Fascism is, after all, socialism through the back door; the enslavement rather than nationalization of private business through regulatory tyranny as a means of providing a conduit for government power. What better cover for American socialists can there be than to sneak in their agenda under cover of the system they hate, capitalism? That’s the role fascism plays in America—a backdoor into socialism. Energy is the industry that powers every other industry. Through profit-motivated investment, innovation, product production, and job creation, industry in the mainstay of the average citizen’s economic well-being. Control energy, and you control the rest.

But the Democrats’ economic fascism alone doesn’t make the Democratic Party fascist. Even Republicans favor fascist economics; e.g., RomneyCare (the model for ObamaCare), antitrust.

To be considered fascist, you need much more; control and censorship of the flow of ideas. This global warming plank is not merely an economic attack on America’s heroic reliable energy producers, and thus on Americans’ economic and social well-being. Dwarfing the economic threat is the overt attack on freedom of speech and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Free speech is the most important political right in a crucial respect: It keeps open the lines of communication among the people, and between the people and their government officials, especially the ability to challenge government policies. Free speech enables us to understand each other, present new ideas, challenge old ideas, settle differences civilly, and ultimately arrive at the truth. Silence industry, and you silence everyone. Who would dare challenge the government’s official line after seeing great industries brought to their knees by out-of-control prosecutors from the federal and state governments?

The end of free speech always begins with an attack on leading voices, in this case the fossil fuel industry. But make no mistake. The democrats are not just looking to silence the fossil fuel companies. The now openly fascist Democrats are also going after researchers, intellectual organizations and individuals, and think tanks—more than 100 of them—that in some way challenge their climate catastrophist dogma. The goal is to shut down dissent. This move is perfectly suited to a Castro or Mussolini regime, not an American government. By cloaking the prosecutorial inquisition in the prestige of science, the American Fascist Party—nor superficially labeled the Democrat Party—mimicks the National-Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party, which cloaked its genetic purity “master race” agenda in the “science” of racism, also known as eugenics. (Eugenics first became well-established in the United States among the “Progressive” movement of the early 20th Century.) The “science” of climate change is now the infallible authority the censors will rely on.

Incredibly, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who headed the draft party platform committee that approved the censorship platform, said with a straight face,

As Democrats, we believe that our country’s greatest strength is its people, and we’re committed to the values of inclusion and opportunity for all. Our candidates ran strong campaigns that addressed the priorities of the American people, and I am proud to say that the drafting process has reflected our commitment as a party to elevating their voices.

So the Democrats idea of “inclusion” is to silence voices of Americans who disagree with them, thus denying to all Americans the “opportunity” to hear all sides of the climate debate and make an informed decision. Ignorance, Schultz apparently believes, is “elevating their voices.” Censorship, Schultz tells us, is one of “the priorities of the American people.” The “voices” to be “elevated” are only those voices that parrot approved government dogma. It’s a terrible precedent. Today, it’s climate change dissenters. Tomorrow, it can and will be any dissenter on any issue whichever political faction happens to be in power decides “the people” shouldn’t hear.

Of course, the Left has been waging a covert war against free speech for some time. The war has been waged under cover of campaign finance and disclosure laws and the like. The Democrats’ pledge to repeal Citizens United is part of that war. But their true intentions are now laid bare.

Speech is words. The only alternative to words is bullets. Bullets are what Democrats are now proposing to use in the “debate” over climate change and what, if anything, to do about it. They apparently believe they are losing on the battleground of public debate, and like all true fascists, they are now turning to the government’s bullets. This is the same Democrat Party that, having failed to stop the assimilation of freed black slaves into American society after the Civil War, turned to government’s guns to thwart black Americans’ freedom in the form of Jim Crow forced segregation laws, black voter suppression laws, and police-sanctioned Ku Klux Klan lynchings. Today, having apparently concluded that they are losing the climate catastrophe/anti-reliable energy debate, are turning to the government’s guns in the form of trampling our sacred First Amendment. This gangster party hasn’t changed its stripes.

I believe the Democrats’ positions on egalitarianism, environmentalism, energy, and “democratic socialism” are horrendous. But this plank is different. It is not a position on a policy issue. It is about shutting out opposing positions at legal gunpoint. It is an overt attack on free speech. Fascism is many things. But you can’t have fascism without government controlling the free flow of ideas and information; censorship. Every aspiring dictator must shut down freedom of speech, sooner or later. For the Democrats, “sooner” has arrived.

Will the Democrats get away with it? The answer to that question will say a lot about America’s future. But there is no escaping the electoral implications of this most heinous development. Assuming the anti-dissent plank is approved at their convention, anyone who votes Democrat from here on has to be considered a fascist, a neo-fascist, or fascist sympathizer.

While styled as a fraud investigation, the AG's investigation amounts to a kind of prosecutorial strategic lawsuit against public participation, widely known as a SLAPP. While the AGs United for Clean Power make no secret that they hope that their investigation will yield them billions in the moral equivalent of climate reparations, the additional goal is to shut up advocacy groups that argue that climate change is not as big problem as the Democratic AGs think it that it is.

About Me

Greetings and welcome to my blog. My name is Michael A. (Mike) LaFerrara. I sometimes use the pen or "screen" name "Mike Zemack" or "Zemack" in online activism, such as posted comments on articles. “Zemack” stands for the first letters of the names of my six grandchildren. I was born in 1949 in New Jersey, U.S.A., where I retired from a career in the plumbing, building controls, and construction industries, and still reside with my wife of 45 years. The purpose of my blog is the discussion of a wide range of topics relating to human events from the perspective of Objectivism, the philosophy of reason, rational self-interest, and Americanism originated by Ayn Rand.

As Rand observed: “The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher.” I am certainly not the philosopher. But neither am I a field agent, or general. I am a foot soldier in that Objectivist army that fights for an individualist society in which every person can live in dignified sovereignty, by his own reasoned judgment, for his own sake, in that state of peaceful coexistence with his fellow man that only capitalist political and economic freedom can provide. While I am a fully committed Objectivist, my opinions are based on my own understanding of Objectivism, and should not be taken as definitive “Objectivist positions.” For the full story of my journey toward Objectivism, see my Introduction.

One final introductory note: I strongly recommend Philosophy, Who Needs it, which highlights the inescapable importance of philosophy in every individual's life. I can be reached at mal.atlas@comcast.net. Thanks, Mike LaFerrara.

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Quotes I Like

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.—Francisco d'Anconia

I love getting older...I get to grow up and learn things. Madalyn, 5 years old, Montesorri student, and my grand-daughter

The best thing one can do for the poor is to not become one of them. Author Unknown

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan

Thinking is hard work. If it weren't, more people would do it. Henry Ford

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. Ayn Rand